Japanese culture
What does Hikikomori mean?
Someone who withdraws for months or years: almost no school, work or life outside the home — in Japanese social vocabulary.
Definition
Hikikomori names the state and the person: someone who withdraws for months or years, with almost no school, work or life outside the home. Tamaki Saitō, in Shakaiteki Hikikomori: Owaranai Shishunki (1998), spoke of six months or more, onset by the late twenties, not better explained by another disorder. The Ministry of Health (MHLW) 2003 guideline, with Junichiro Ito, treated it as a psychosocial phenomenon, outside a medical diagnosis. The 2010 revision, with Kazuhiko Saitō, locked in being house-bound more than six months, out of social participation, and warned against mixing it with schizophrenia. The DSM does not reserve a single code for it. It can sit with depression, anxiety, school refusal (futōkō). A Saturday in a room stays outside the cut. The West sometimes pastes the word onto any shy person; the Japanese cut is duration and harm.
Origin
Hikikomori is Japanese 引きこもり / ひきこもり. It joins hiku, to pull back, and komoru, to shut oneself in. The withdrawal word already circulated; Tamaki Saitō closed the social-clinical cut in 1998. MHLW issued the first guideline in 2003 (Ito) and the 2010 one (Kazuhiko Saitō), with the more-than-six-months-at-home criterion.
History
From Japan’s own debate — futōkō, family, the ministry — the word moved into world reporting. A 2016 Cabinet Office survey put about 541,000 people aged 15–39 in that cut. Western forums loosened it to “doesn’t leave the house”; in Japan the criterion remains time and harm, not an offline weekend.
How it emerged
Japan needed a name for long seclusion that did not fit social phobia alone or a DSM code. Six months at home, out of school and work, asked for their own label — and Saitō gave the one the press and the ministry used.
Usage examples
Hikikomori is not an offline weekend.
The word describes a long withdrawal, not a hobby.
Translations
- pt hikikomori
- en hikikomori
- es hikikomori
Synonyms
- social withdrawal
- prolonged isolation
- 引きこもり